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Audio
is taken from the little booklet Loving What Is
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Byron
Kathleen Reid, a businesswoman and mother
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living
in the high desert of southern California,
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became
severely depressed while in her thirties. Over
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a
ten-year period her depression deepened, and Katie
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(as
she is called) spent almost two years rarely able
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to
leave her bed, obsessing over suicide. Then one
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morning,
from the depths of despair, she experienced
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a
life-changing realization.
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Katie
saw that when she believed that something should
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be
different than it is (“My husband should love me more,”
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“My children should appreciate me,”) she
suffered,
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and
that when she didn’t believe these thoughts, she felt
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peace.
She realized that what had been causing her
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depression
was not the world around her, but the beliefs
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she
had about the world around her.
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In a
flash of insight, Katie saw that our attempt to find
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happiness
was backward—instead of hopelessly trying to
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change
the world to match our thoughts about how it
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“should” be, we can question these thoughts and, by
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meeting
reality as it is, experience unimaginable freedom
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and
joy. Katie developed a simple yet powerful method
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of
inquiry, called The Work, that helped make this
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transformation
practical. As a result, a bed-ridden, suicidal
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woman
became filled with love for everything life brings.
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Katie’s insight
into the mind is consistent with leading edge
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research
in cognitive psychology, and The Work
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has
been compared to the Socratic dialogue, Buddhist
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teachings,
and 12-step programs. But Katie developed
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her
method without any knowledge of religion or
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psychology.
The Work is based purely on one woman’s
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direct
experience of how suffering is created and
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ended.
It is astonishingly simple, accessible to people
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of
all ages and backgrounds, and requires nothing
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more
than a pen and paper and an open mind. Katie
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saw
right away that giving people her insights or
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answers
was of little value — instead, she offers a
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process
that can give people their own answers. The
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first
people exposed to her Work reported that the
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experience
was transformational, and she soon began
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receiving
invitations to teach the process publicly.
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